ANOTHER DOOMSDAY ENVIRONMENTALIST REFUTED.

Look, it borders on cruelty to call attention to the failed predictions of doomsday environmentalists.  Every so often, though, something comes to light that offers a little play value in a winter of discontent.  To set the stage, consider a passage in one of the doomsday tomes of the late 1960s, I forget which one, which was contrasting the wastefulness of single-use metal cans in the developed countries with the great value a single metal can might have to a poor family somewhere in the developing world.  That might have been the same tome that raised the prospect of people in the rich countries mining their dumps to get at the metal in those long-ago-discarded, now rusty, cans.

Reality turned out somewhat differently.  First, there's a lot of recycling value in those cans, and the steel companies have been able to make better grade product out of scrap.  Second, in the developing world, those metal cans might be more valuable as scrimshaw than as an electric furnace charge.  "Crude and very funky, but very desirable models of some real classics. These are totally Third-World. Fabricated out of metal scraps and hand-painted, in outdoor workshops. Incredibly interesting that these find their way to our markets, and are even sanctioned and licensed by Volkswagen! We find them very interesting and desirable, and think they fit into any collection."

That's right, dear reader, the clutter in my mailbox from merchants and eleemosynary institutions seeking to separate me from my money is rising to Festive Season levels.

But if you're looking for something to do during those long winter nights, there are ways to scratch-build your own beer can models.  And learn a few things, such as you can field strip a nine volt transistor radio battery to get six AAA cells.

Let the record show that at least one of the old-style silk-screened metal boxcars populating the model railroad uses what might have been discarded can-stock, based on what's printed on the inside of the sides.